An everyday tale of family and political life with a dollop of Formula One and various random thoughts on the side.

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Millennium Musings - looking forward on my 1000th post

I hope that you weren't expecting a guest post from everybody's favourite elephant and I hope he doesn't think I was shamelessly using his name in an attempt to attract readers or at least if he does that he doesn't mind.

Three days short of three and a half years after I started this blog, I reach my 1000th post!

I really love blogging and in many ways it's been a real help to me over past year since I've not been in the best of physical health and I hope that I keep going through several more millennia. I hope that's not too reminiscent of Thatcher's statement of intent to go on and on and on, but at least you can just choose not to read what I write if you don't like it. We were stuck with the Tories for far too long.

I want this to be a looking forward post more than anything - and there certainly is a huge amount to look forward to in the next few months.

For a start, there's the election and its aftermath. Will the Liberal Democrats' positive message of fairness, cleaning up politics, and giving extra help to the schoolchildren who need it most be enough to save us from being squeezed in the face of a relentlessly brutal onslaught from the other two. So far the evidence of the polls is yes - we're doing very well compared even to 2005 but miles ahead of 2001 before the starting pistol is fired and we usually go up during the campaign when we have the benefit of getting decent representation in the media.

We also have a leader and a shadow chancellor who are well liked and respected by the public, who have been right on so many of the big issues of the day. Labour have nothing remotely positive to say, no record to defend after 13 years and their campaign is going to be focused on them not being the Tories. The Tories are discredited both on their ideas (their ridiculous marriage tax break which by its nature will benefit men most and penalise women, their total lack of credibility on the economy (I wouldn't trust George Osborne to run a bath, let alone the country's finances) and this week's Cashcroft scandal.

Then there's my second love. Next weekend, the Formula 1 season kicks off. I know that a couple of people aren't keen on the F1 posts and I did think about setting up a separate site - but I just don't have the time, energy or expertise to do that at the moment. The run up to a General Election is not a good moment for that, so F1 is here to stay at least for the next couple of months. If I was on Wordpress, i know it would be possible for you to get an RSS feed that excludes the F1 posts, but I don't think it's even possible to do on Blogger. If you know different, let me know.

The coming season looks likely to excite for all the right reasons - on the track. First of all we have the return of him:

From the testing during February, we can see that Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari have all put in strong performances with the Williams looking like it's snapping at their heels.

Then there's the new teams - we have 12 teams this year rather than 10, with Sauber (still called BMW Sauber on the FIA entry list) rising from the ashes of BMW, Lotus making a welcome reappearance and ensuring there's still a Finn on the grid after the much lamented departure of Kimi Raikonnen. Who on earth, though, thought it was a good idea to call team HRT Racing?. Surely they have at least one English speaking woman in their organisation? Honestly!

Last year was filled with politics and scandal off the track - this year is just, hopefully, going to be about the racing.

Then after that there's Matt Smith's first series as the Doctor, also the first to be produced without Russell T Davies. If you haven't seen the preview trailer, here it is:

Then, there's the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, out in June:

Before we even get to Andy Murray playing at Wimbledon.

There will be Tony Blair's memoirs to rip to pieces.

And if we get bored towards the end of the year, there's the midterm elections in the US.

In the background to all of this, I want to do what I can to help Jenniewith her new project. I really like what they are doing, trying to collect and highlight the work of women bloggers so that nobody can ever complain, when they've produced yet another testosterone biased feature, that there weren't any women writing about the subject. There usually are, but it's often only when someone with a penis makes a point that it's taken seriously in cyberspace. Jennie and her colleagues have made a good start in a few short days.

All of that is certainly enough to keep me busy for a few posts yet. I hope you'll stick around for the ride.